


The Eyes Have It (Based on Image)

by froofie



Category: Benedict Cumberbatch - Fandom
Genre: Angels, Costume, Costume Party, Eyes, F/M, Fancy Dress Party, Meditation, RPF, Spiritual, benedict cumberbatch rpf, chakras, meet cute, spirituality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 11:48:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/froofie/pseuds/froofie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A conversation with the Invisible Man at party.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Eyes Have It (Based on Image)

**Author's Note:**

> Lots of New Agey, Self-Improvement, God, Energy, Universe talk here.

“Oh! Excuse me!”

“No, my pardon, I didn’t see you coming.”

“Well, then, it worked!”

“What worked?”

“My costume. Care to take a guess?”

“Well, when I saw you walking around the party earlier, I figured you were a posh burn victim.”

[Laughs] “That’s a good imagination you have there. Sadly, I made it through the fire, which would make a good song lyric, but I digress. No, I’m The Invisible Man.”

“Ah. Not Griffin from the book...?”

“No, but you’re the first person to make that association, well done! No. I’m just incognito.”

[playfully] “Hiding from anyone in particular?”

“That’s an interesting question. In a way, yes.”

“In what way, may I ask?”

“I suppose you could say I might be hiding from preconceived notions.”

“Others or your own?”

“Ah, another valuable query. I like this. From others mainly, but I suppose in the end, it’s my own thoughts about myself.” [Bites bottom lip, cutely]

“May I hypothesize, considering we’re both at a party with a lot of celebrities, that you yourself are one of them but either don’t like it or aren’t comfortable with it?”

“Continue with your hypothesis, fair angel.”

“Yes, I know, my costume is a little more obvious than yours. Or maybe it’s more mysterious, who’s to say? Anyway. So, assuming you’re a celebrity for real and you come to a costume party with your face covered and you admit to hiding from the preconceived notions of others, I suppose I could deduce that you’d like for people to get to know you for YOU and not for whatever it is you’re famous for.”

[To no one] “Nice choice of words, ‘deduce’....” “You’d be correct in your assumptions.”

“Well, I’m not particularly interested in what you do,  even if you didn’t have your face covered, so you may feel safe with me. I do like this conversation, and would give heaven and earth to keep from having small talk for the rest of the night with the other guests.”

“You’re not in ‘the business’ are you?”

“One might say I’m even not of this Earth. Care to take this somewhere less network-y?”

“They’ve lit up the garden path. May I suggest a jaunt, you heavenly creature? Pardon my forwardness, but given your dress I assume you’ll forgive it?”

“Yes to both.” [Takes his arm]

[In garden]

“Here’s what I find the most intriguing about your costume...”

“I’m all ears. Though, you can’t see them.”

[Smile/Laugh] “It’s the fact that you have on sunglasses.”

“Yes?”

“Well, you could have gone without them, but you didn’t. And that’s a really smart move.”

“How so? Oh, watch your wing there”

[Avoids bumping into shrub] “Thank you. Well, covering your face is one thing, if people don’t know who you are, they won’t know you even if they can see your eyes. But covering your eyes keeps EVERYONE guessing and it also keeps them from knowing you - KNOWING YOU. If you’re famous, they’ve seen your eyes elsewhere, so they could probably guess who you are.”

“You’re a bright one.”

“I see what you did there. Also, another good reason to be wearing shades.”

“I like you.”

“It gets better.”

[Smile]

“That’s really, so far, the only jarring thing about your costume.”

“What’s that?”

“I can’t see your eyes. As a human being, I think there’s  a great need for visual connection. It’s one thing to not see your face, but not being able to see your eyes is disconcerting. I don’t know. Maybe it’s just where I am in my life at the moment.”

“And where are you in your life besides walking a lovely English garden labyrinth with a man  who just wants people to know him and not the roles he plays.”

“Ah, you’re an actor.”

“You had doubts?”

“You could have been a singer or a talk show host. You have an amazing voice.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“My apologies for interrupting you.”

“No, it’s fine.”

“Please continue. Where are you in your life right now that makes you uncomfortable not being able to see people’s eyes?”

“Well, I suppose I’ll be the one to reveal a bit about myself here. I recently did this guided meditation. Do you meditate?”

“I have yes.”

“So, I was doing this meditation, a visualization I suppose. I wasn’t sure where it was going, which is probably the point. The guru grounded us and then had us travel with our attention up into the higher chakras. I assume you know those are energy centers in and around the body?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, so, he had us travel to the eighth energy center, which is not in the body, it’s a few inches above the top of the head. Many call it The Temple of Understanding. This is where it may start to sound weird if you’re not into spirituality. I’ll be bold and just speak it anyway.”

“I’m open”

“Yes, I can tell. Can't cover that up with a bandage. At the Temple of Understanding there is a building, you can imagine it anyway you like, but most people who have been there agree it’s fashioned after Greek architecture. Or maybe Greek architecture was fashioned after it, who knows.”

“That’s the image I got!”

“Right. In the Temple is the Hall of Records where everyone’s life agreements are written down, you know, the things you agreed to as an energy being before incarnating in human form. And there’s a fountain of light where you can release your burdens. Still with me?”

“Fascinatingly so.”

“One time I went to the Temple, the first time actually, I just laid in this giant angel’s lap and kept repeating how tired I was, that being human was wearisome and I fell asleep in meditation class. They had to wake me up when it was over.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I’m back at this Temple vision

thing and the guide asks us to go to this altar in the main hall and above the altar are all these framed photos of the great spiritual teachers from all religions and no religions and then there’s a framed photo of you on the same wall with the other masters. We were requested to look into our own eyes in the picture. I mean REALLY. LOOK. And of course the guide is reminding us that we all are spiritual masters, we’ve just forgotten. But looking into my own eyes was magnificent. I really felt my own power. You know that saying ‘you’re a spiritual being having a human experience’?”

“Yes.”

“Well, looking into my own eyes, even in my own imagination, really did something to me. When you’re reminded of your own grace, your own love, especially when you’ve been cut off from it for much of your life, as most of us are, it’s like the floodgates opened. I became obsessed with people’s eyes. Even thought about doing some kind of art exhibition of nothing but photographs of eyes...the eyes of the homeless, the eyes of presidents, the eyes of dictators, the eyes of babies. In the end, we’re all the same, just different incarnations of energy. Dare I say, we’re all Gods.”

“I would not disagree with you on that. I remember doing this exercise in acting class once where we were partnered up with another person, sitting across from each other and we were asked to send energy to that person through your eyes. So, you breathed in and when you exhaled you exhaled energy out through your eyes to the other person’s eyes. When my partner did it to me, when she exhaled, her eyes, which were grey, I swear, turned purple. Her irises turned purple.”

“Amazing!”

“I do, I get what you’re saying. It’s really beautiful. Extraordinary.”

“We seem to have reached the end of the property. Turn around and go back?”

“Reluctantly, sure. How long ago was this meditation experience?”

“Maybe a month ago? After I did it, I realized how infrequently I made eye contact with people. All of a sudden I HAD to look in people’s eyes. Sometimes if I saw a picture of someone online, I would cover up their faces with a piece of paper just so I could focus only on their eyes and not be distracted by the rest of their physical body. I craved knowing, seeing things in people's eyes. And here you are, completely covered up but with sunglasses on! It’s almost a perfect storm or something. In many ways, for me, you could have shown up in only sunglasses, completely naked, pardon MY boldness, and I wouldn’t have seen you. Now THAT’S an Invisible Man.”

“Incredible. Keep saying things.”

[Laughs] “Your eyes say everything about you, more than anything else. Your eyes are the most intimate part of your body. I think part of the reason I didn’t make a lot of eye contact with people was because on some level I didn’t want them to see me...well, the negative vulnerable parts of me, so I just wouldn’t let them see that. But the more I opened up to my goodness, the easier it’s been to let people see that. You really cannot see any of the bad things we think about ourselves in the eyes. The only thing there is love.”

“Slow down, I don’t want to be back at the party just yet.”

“Sure, sorry. I can get a little passionate sometimes. Let me hold your arm again and you keep the pace.”

“My pleasure. Here. Tell me more about what we can see in each other’s eyes.”

“Um. Hmmm. Two things come to mind. One: I remember being at my brother’s wedding. I was in the wedding party as a bridesmaid, so I got to stand up at the altar as the vows were given. When it came time for my brother to give his, I could not tear my eyes away from his as he looked at his bride. There was so much love coming from his eyes at her. I knew I was seeing God’s face. I’ve never forgotten that image. Makes me tear up thinking about it.”

“Oh, dear. If you need  tissue, I could unravel some of my bandage...”

[Laugh] “No, I’m good, you're kind, but thank you.”

“What was the other thing?”

“Oh, yes. I was in a self-improvement kind of seminar and the leader had us all do this sort of ice-breaker game at the start. We were each given a piece of paper and pen and we had to go around the room, completely silent, and look into each other’s eyes, one by one. You would walk up to one person, you would look in each other’s eyes for a breath and then you would write down what you saw in that other person’s eyes, on their paper. Then you moved on to another person. This went on for maybe 20 minutes, until everyone had “met” everyone else and our papers were full of what others saw in our eyes. By the end we were all in tears, this competely silent room full of people emotionally open and some of them seen, you know “SEEN” like in Avatar, for the first time since they were babies. I still have my sheet of paper. What’s interesting is how spot on almost all the comments are about what others saw in me.”

“What did they see?”

“Do you want to do it?”

“What?”

“Look in my eyes and find out.”

“Sure!”

“Okay. Let’s stop here, move out of the way so people won’t wonder what’s up.

“Alright.”

“So, just look in my eyes for a couple of breaths and when you have a few things in your heart, say them to me.”

“Okay.”

[Inhale, exhale]

[Inhale, exhale]

[Inhale, exhale]

[Smile]. “Wow. Okay.”

“What do you see?”

“Well, I see your power, which is really grounded, like a giant tree. I see an edgy sense of humor and joy. I see a lot of creativity,  kindness and a lot of vulnerability. Did I get anything right?”

“It’s not a matter of being right, I suppose it’s more of what you see. But you are spot on with all of it. I hide the vulnerability most of the time. What about you?”

“Do I hide my vulnerability?”

“Well, I might could deduce that even from across the room tonight...”

“...there’s that word again....”

“No, I meant, do you want me to see you?”

“Oh. Wow.” [Pauses]

“You don’t have to, I was just wanting to reciprocate.”

“No, no, it’s fine, I’d love it. I just felt really naked all of a sudden, thinking about taking off my sunglasses!”

“See!”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

“It’s okay, you don’t have to. I’ve enjoyed our talk. Or, rather, my monologues, sorry. Suppose I should have asked about you, gotten to know you without seeing you so to speak. I suppose I’ll go home and kick myself for not getting to know you that way. I’m not normally this verbose.”

“No. Here. Look.” [Takes off sunglasses]

[Smile] “Wow.”

“What, what?!”

“You’re beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“Okay, that was just an obvious one. Let me take some breaths.”

[Inhale, exhale]

[Inhale, exhale]

[Inhale, exhale]

[Close eyes, smiling, breathing deeper]

“What?”

“I’m soaking it in. You’re eyes are hypnotizing.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” [inhale] “Okay, I see a very wise soul but a young heart, very boyish and innocent, but not stupid or inexperienced, just pure, playful, wicked. I see a lot of love, you give easily, you’re honest, kind. I see loyalty. I see seriousness, quietude.”

“Yeah.”

“How was that?”

“Spot on. Almost frighteningly so.”

“How so?”

“Because I’ve been here for 2 hours talking with all kinds of people, making people laugh, having a good time. But you’re the only person who’s seen me all night.”

“Then your costume worked!”

“Yes.”

[Pause]

“You seem sad now.”

“Just, well, it feels a bit lonely. I think even when I come to these parties without my face covered, this is the same experience I have, being looked at but not seen.”

“Well, I suppose it’s up to you how visible you make yourself. Sometimes it just takes time for people to calm down and open their eyes. And sometimes it helps if you make an effort to see others first.”

“Are you sure you’re not a real angel?”

“No, not an angel. A God. Just like you.”

[Smile. Puts glasses in pocket, extends hand.]

“I’m Ben.”

[Shake hand. Smile. Make eye contact]

“Hi, Ben. Nice to finally meet you.”  


End file.
